


Last Rites

by saberquill



Category: Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Jor-El holographic duplicate, Loss, Stupid virtual ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saberquill/pseuds/saberquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...he had no part more in his son’s life then an old letter, written by a long-dead hand."</p>
<p>Or five moments after Jor-El dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Rites

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off several things that stuck out to me after I saw Man of Steel. I don't really know comics continuity, and I haven't read the novelizations. Still, it seemed to me that there was more to Jor-El then anyone noticed.

Jor-El was dying.

He was dying, but he had trained for this.

The consciousness-transfer program was there, behind his thoughts, as it had been for the last month. He had felt it, at the bottom of his dreams, combing through his thoughts, compressing copies of his memories, making him an artificial soul.

In truth, he was glad, as he sent his mental duplicate to the tiny craft preparing the ship’s jump, he was glad to have his mind back, if only for a few precious seconds. 

Zod and Lara were reaching out, minds pushing forward, trying to make contact. He pushed them away, his wife with love, and Zod with sadness, leaving both with only his regret. 

The quiet in his head was a comfort. He looked up, into the golden sky and sent a quiet prayer after that small, blue light.

Them the quiet became absolute, and his vision went white.

Without much ceremony, Jor-El died.

***

The next time Jor-El opened his eyes was much later.

Strictly speaking, he was not Jor-El, he reminded himself. He was a copy, a ghost. It helped quiet the panic he felt as his consciousness spread lazily through the ship. 

Briefly, he wished that Lara had preserved herself too, that she could be here, now, their minds intertwining as they so often had- 

But he stopped himself. The psychic interface would drive a mind without training mad. Indeed, the cold river of binary running under his thoughts was threatening to rip even him apart.

All this fell from his thoughts, however, when he saw the figure at the end of the hall. He had Lara’s dark, wavy hair, and Jor-El’s own clear, blue eyes. His stance was tense, ready to run, but his head was unbowed. 

The part of his mind that was still alive wanted to run to him, embrace him, cry out with joy, but- (identification still in progress)- insisted another part of him. And indeed, Jor-El doubted he could bear to see his arms glide through him, and be reminded that he had no part more in his son’s life then an old letter, written by a long-dead hand.

***

The next time, he did not meet his son. The figure before him was a woman- the same one wounded by the security sentinel earlier. The living mind in him was glad, but the binary, now a cold current he felt pulling against him every moment, was still vexed at the intrusion.

Still, new memories showed her vial signs when his son lost consciousness- and older ones show his when she was hurt.

Inwardly, Jor-El laughed with joy, though his programs chilled it to a coldly cordial outward smile.

As he taught her what she must know to stop Zod, he wondered about her and Kal’s children. Will their eyes be blue, like Kal’s, will they bear streaks of green, like hers? It is fitting, he noted, that together they make another world’s living colors.

***

The last time, he awakens to see Zod. He reaches out, desperately attempting a mind touch- his thoughts have almost no machine in them now that the program holding them is dying. Surprisingly, it works. Zod receives his desperation, answering it with a full sending.

Jor-El sees his son, soaked in Genesis compound, grinning too wide with a mouthful of sharp teeth. (He will doom them all.) Zod thinks, his mind-voice streaked with despair.

Jor-El returns with an image of the Earth, the populace stronger, more alive then any human or Kryptonian. (No,) Jor-El thinks (He will save them both.) 

Zod sends a blast of hatred, full of half-finished thoughts (-impure!) (-unclean.) (-traitor!) 

Jor-El sends back an image of Zod himself. He is spattered by the pale red blood of a native Kryptonian, and he wears the contrite robes of a criminal, awaiting execution. Underneath, Jor-El lets in a flash of the pain that punctuated his last organic memories. It is unfair, he thinks, but then Jor-El is not a warrior- he does not always fight fair.

The revulsion Zod sends back is tinged with guilt- but more with rage. “I will take the codex from his corpse and rebuild Krypton on his bones!” He screams, and commands the computer to delete the remnants of Jor-El’s program.

Doubt blooms over Jor-El’s mind as the static begins to fill it- then the noise becomes absolute and he is taken by blackness.

***  
(Perhaps, if their is justice, there was a copy of the command key. Perhaps, Jor-El planed for this, and their is another time he awakens and another and he sees the children his child has- two girls, Lara and Martha- and his dreams come to life in their blue-green eyes. Or perhaps the dreams- Earth and Krypton wedded, and the children that inherit learning from both- are left to other minds, to other dreamers. Who knows what hopes or dreams or plans may pass through a mind as the static closes in and yields to silence?)


End file.
